In 2008, I bought for the first time in my life a video game with my own pocket money; LittleBigPlanet, an extraordinary game that permanently changed the way I perceive video games. Attending and observing the Tangle exhibition brought me back to the sense of wonder I first felt when I played LittleBigPlanet. This essay is not about LittleBigPlanet, but I will partly use it as well as text from Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal to analyze Tangle and the way it affected me and other players.

The Tangle experience starts before entering it; a bit more than a dozen of three or so meters long plastic poles stand on top of short platforms in the middle of the campus center, enclosed by a white fence. On top of the poles, hundreds of pieces of colorful string are interwoven, forming some sort of a chaotic beautiful roof. After getting my ticket scanned, I stood outside of the fence while four members of the Polyglot group wearing white t-shirts, suspenders, or yellow pants surveyed us like they would for test experiment subjects. Another member stands back behind a keyboard where he plays bubbly dream-like music, using other instruments such as a flute, his own voice, and percussions. Once we’re in, we’re handed balls of orange ribbon and one instruction; tie it around the poles. This eccentric introduction managed to convey a clear message that proved to be accurate during the rest of the exhibit; this play experience wasn’t going to be your average play experience. It was going to be quirky, weird and fun. All you had to do is anything you wanted to.

Playing with the ribbon was pleasing. It was elastic and really nice to touch. The material made it so that it was really encouraging to pull at it, fold it around your fingers, and tie it a little everywhere. And tying it was satisfying. In Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal explains how one of the reasons why play works is that it gives you work. When one plays in a well-designed environment, feedback is provided almost immediately to congratulate the player for the efforts they have accomplished and to give them that satisfying feeling one gets after tying their thread around 5 different poles, feeling the pull of the string in their hand, and getting visual feedback from the new colorful path they have created. And this feeling only grows stronger as one plays more and starts tracing the strings with their eyes as they elongate, overlap and cross each other. McGonigal argues in her book that one looks in games for this kind of work because it is rarely provided in real life. Whether it is in the workplace or in school, people often find their work confusing and or meaningless. Whenever I want to prepare for my Data Structures mid-term, I struggle because I don’t have any material to practice on and no one to guide me, and even if I re-read the lessons 5 times I still get a C on my test; there is no perceptible challenge. But in the world of Tangle, it is not only easy but also rewarding to create and shape the space around you, and that is more satisfaction than most of what we get everyday. And it’s also a lot more fun.

It’s entertaining to tie strings around poles and having to sneak oneself inside the tangle as it grows thicker to get from point A to point B, but Tangle is at its most fun when other people’s fun starts affecting yours. For example, I spent the first half of Tangle tying my string everywhere to create the most complicated structure, but my play experience changed completely once one of my friends joined in and started pulling down on the strings that were already on the poles before we started. We worked then to pull down the whole mass until it was on our level, using it – or failing to – as hammocks, going down under the mass and sprouting back up, trapping each other, etc. Each move from one would inspire someone’s else’s move and change the way they were playing. That was when I had a feeling that the possibilities were “endless”, similar to when I played LittleBigPlanet. While the first few hours of the game are spent on the adventure/platform story mode, the game changes completely and reaches new heights of fun once the main campaign is over and the online mode is unlocked. In LittleBigPlanet, players are able to create their own levels with the same if not more depth than the story mode levels and the community never fails to provide with quality, surprising, and fresh creations. While the poles, strings and our own bodies are our only tools of creation in Tangle, there is a similar concept of play-enhancing community. Like in LittleBigPlanet, there is a lot of room for creativity in Tangle. Players can pretty much do anything they want, and the Polyglot members encourage unconventional activities. They never stop you, but do restrain you physically with pieces of string. They also interact a lot with the children and follow them in their fantasies – that the strings are a spider web, a fishing net, or whatever may cross their mind. And again, like in LittleBigPlanet, the more people played and initiated or followed new forms of play, the more fun it was for everyone involved. When it comes to social play, there is little need to provide complicated gameplay tools like chess pieces or different FPS weapons. A few pieces of string suffice. There is also no need to provide a “story-mode” or complex guidelines or a goal to achieve. In social play, the players easily create their own context and meanings out of almost nothing and thrive off the group’s collective creativity. Even if we’re all strangers to each other.

McGonigal talks in Reality is Broken about the power of games to create and reinforce bonds even with strangers. While I hesitate to call Tangle a game, the factors that she describes about games’ social aspect apply to the play in Tangle. First, there’s the physical closeness. Touching other people releases oxytocin, a hormone that makes you likelier to trust somebody and form bonds with them. And there is a lot of touching in Tangle, whether it happens while trying to get through the tangle and brushing past four different people or trying to tie up someone while they’re themselves tying you up. Secondly, McGonigal claims that having to face the same constraints and collaborating towards the same goal gives a sort of group empathy rarely encountered in real life. There is no goal or true constraint in Tangle, but the shared experience of being tangled up and having to extricate oneself as well as feeling the effect of everyone’s work from the pull of the strings makes it easier to relate to everyone else that is part of the tangle, in a quick way that is hardly ever achieved by conventional social interactions.

In summary, playing in Tangle is satisfying because of the material used and the ability to create and immediately admire one’s work. The more people play, the more there is fuel for creativity and the more fun Tangle becomes. And finally, leaving Tangle left me feeling warm inside thanks to a successful albeit atypical social interaction.